The astronomical significance of the Golden Age: Astrea and the "fall" of Phaeton

di Andrew Casella
cover: Sidney Hall, representation of the Virgo constellation, taken from "Urania's Mirror", 1825)

(follows from Stellar symbolism and solar symbolism)

All the peoples of the world sang of a mythical "first time" of abundance, in which the gods walked the earth and all things were in harmony. The myth of the Golden Age fascinated poets from remote antiquity to the times of the Renaissance. Basically, it was believed to be a time of material wonders, in which the bodily well-being of men was guaranteed by the natural and infinite flow of milk and honey. But are things really as the poets sang? What was the Golden Age really? The poets themselves, on the other hand, have preserved (consciously or not) some revelatory clues to the mystery, which refer, once again, to the celestial vault.

We have extensively discussed [cf. A Science in Tatters: Survival of the Doctrines of Cyclic Time from the Timaeus to the Apocalypse] of the motion of the precession and of how the quadrangular "earth" passing through the four cardinal points of the year is not always identical to itself, but on the contrary "silent" constantly with the alternation of constellations in the four points. Our current era is that of Pisces, which began around the year 0; previously there had been the Age of Aries, which began around 2200 BC. C .; even before the Era of the Bull, which began in 4200 BC. C. about [cf. Cyclic time and its mythological meaning: the precession of the equinoxes and the tetramorph]. The Golden Age is to be found in the astrological age immediately preceding this, that is, in the Age of Gemini, which began in 6200 BC. C. about. At that time the four cardinal points were governed as follows: at the vernal equinox the constellation of Gemini rose eliacally; Sagittarius at the autumn equinox; at the summer solstice the Virgin; at the winter solstice, Pisces.

This is all particularly interesting for a number of reasons. Here, it is enough to give two facts:

1. It is said that at that time Astraea (the celestial Virgin) still walked among men distributing peace and justice (sometimes Astrea is identified with Themes);
2. At the end of the Manvantara that precedes ours, Vishnu appears in the form of a fish to Satyavrata (future Manu of the present cycle with the name of Vaivaswata) to announce that the world would be destroyed by a flood and that he would have to take refuge in an ark. that he would personally take care of leading safely across the waters. Matsya, or Vishnu in the form of a fish (like Enki-Ea, after all), is also the Avatara of the Golden Age (Satya Yuga) of this Manvantara.

But the really decisive data was highlighted by Santillana and Dechend, authors of de Hamlet's mill (p.89):

"At Tempo Zero”[Which is also the translation commonly used to indicate a remote epoch of Egyptian history, lo Zep Tepi, ed] "the two equinoctial "hinges" of the world had been Gemini and Sagittarius, between which the arc of the Milky Way extends: both these signs are bicorporeal (as were those placed at the other corners, Pisces and Virgo with his ear of corn). The image of the arc of the Milky Way stretched between the two "hinges" expresses the concept that the way between the earth and the sky (the Milky Way, in fact) was open, the ascending way and the descending way where in that Age of Gold men and gods could meet ... The extraordinary virtue of the Golden Age consisted precisely in the coincidence of the crossing point between the ecliptic and the equator with that between the ecliptic and the Galaxy, which occurred in the constellations of Gemini and Sagittarius, which 'stood firm' at two of the four corners of the quadrangular earth".

In practice, in the Golden Age, the Milky Way acted as a visible equinoctial colure, which intersected at the same time the celestial equator and the ecliptic, connecting the celestial north and south; and it is an extraordinary fact, considering that this (like the solstice colure) is a normally invisible line. In this epoch, the celestial Virgin rose eliacally at the summer solstice carrying an ear (ɑ virginis still retains the name of Spica), nunciature of the harvest period. From this era (which also sees the dawn of agriculture with the domestication of triticum aestivum: wheat) there are the enigmatic prehistoric "venus", which have been defined as symbols of fertility and which refer to those men "subject to mothers" of whom Hesiod speaks about the Silver Age. On the other hand it is said that Astrea, at the end of the Golden Age, did not immediately return to heaven, but that first withdrew "on the hills": according to Arato di Soli (quoted in Alberto Camerotto and Sandro Carniel The limits of man between waters, skies and lands p. 168):

“Still remained, as long as the earth continued to feed the golden stock. But the silver one he frequented little and no more willingly, he regretted the customs of the ancient peoples. However she still remained in the time of the silver lineage. She descended in the evening from the echoing hills alone ... ".

Graves writes (The Greek myths, Introduction): "Throughout Neolithic Europe ... religious beliefs were very homogeneous and all based on the cult of a mother goddess with many names, also venerated in Syria and Libya" [cfr. for the Roman tradition Anna Perenna and the source of the eternal return].

The very ancient relationship between the Virgin and the Sun reaches through the meanders of time up to relatively recent periods, spilling over into the initiatory doctrine of the Eleusinian Mysteries, with Demeter giving birth to the divine child Brimos, or Dionysus [cf. Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'], which, however, by the peremptory affirmation of Heraclitus (Fr. 38), they have nothing sacred about them.

Thus, in the Golden Age the three great celestial lines were united and together constituted the armor-axis of the world. The way that connected the three worlds, the "earth", the "sky" and the "kingdom of the dead", was open and there was no distinction between men and gods, all equally immortal. Who knows whether the "chaos", the primordial undifferentiated state prior to the separation of "heaven" and "earth", does not have its roots here. Otherwise, one would not understand why Heraclitus (Fr. 18) basically says that Hesiod is someone who doesn't understand anything. The suspicion is still legitimate, especially since, until recently, Saturnalia was celebrated near the vernal equinox [cf. Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'].

Now, it is all too well known that the Golden Age saw Kronos-Saturn as its ruler [cf. Apollo / Kronos in exile: Ogygia, the Dragon, the "fall"], "Son of Gaia and starry Uranus", according to an Orphic hymn. The Saturnalia (of which Eliade reports a homologous Babylonian feast attributing the same meaning to them [cf. The myth of the eternal return p. 80]) could have been, rather than an extravagant apotropaic feast of "subversion of social roles" to give vent to repressed demonic instincts, a commemoration of that golden mythical time in which there were no distinctions between gods, men and spirits [cf. . The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany].

A study could be made on all the festivities (especially those linked to certain solar deities) whose primordial meaning could have been strictly astronomical and astrological; meaning that was later lost in the appearance of a ritual dedicated to "vegetation", "wheat" or "fertility", as Frazer, as a good Anglo-Saxon empiricist indicates, without any discount; but that would take us far too far. It is significant, however, that for a singular Cherokee ritual (The golden branch p. 585), which seems to describe the desperation for the loss of the ancient cardinal points in the "celestial field", the author reports that the relative meaning had been forgotten by the Indian priests themselves.

Whatever the case may be, that "golden" condition ceased, around 4500 BC. A memory of this tragedy has remained in various traditions of the world, which speak (as we have already mentioned) of a "fire" of the earth. Of that upheaval he narrates, under the usual language of myth, the story of Phaeton, son of Helios. As is well known, the young man had convinced his father to let him drive the chariot of the sun for a day. Unfortunately, during the journey, due to the fright caused him by the sight of the animals depicted in the zodiac signs (see Pierre Grimal, Encyclopedia of myths, Garzanti 1990, p. 285), the horses went wild, deviating from the usual course. This drift of the sun had the result that the whole earth, due to the unusual proximity, was completely burned. At that point Zeus, not being able to do otherwise, struck with the thunderbolt Phaeton, who fell dead in the waters of the river Eridanus. Grandfather of Panopoli, author of the famous Dionysian, use explicit language (Dionysianche XXXVIII, 349 ff.):

"There was a tumult in the sky that shook the connectitures of the still universe; even the axis that passes through the center of the revolving heavens bent. With difficulty the Libyan Atlas, propped up on his knees, his back curved under the greatest load, was able to support the firmament of the stars that turns itself".

Manilius (Astronomical I, 748 - 749), says: "The world caught fire, and in new stars lit clear reminder of his fate bears". That the story of Phaeton is not just a moralizing fable (thesis that the good Graves, among others, is still willing to marry without reservation [The Greek myths, Postal Code. 42]) comes to us from Plato, through the mouth of an Egyptian priest. The latter, conversing with Solon, reveals (Timaeus 22 c - d):

"There have been many and various catastrophes for humanity, and there will still be many, the greatest due to fire and water, others less serious caused by infinite other causes. What is also told by you, for example [so this is not an exclusively Greek "fable", ed] that once Phaeton, son of the Sun, after having yoked his father's chariot and being unable to guide it along the paternal path, burned everything that was on earth and died himself electrocuted, well this story is told in the form of a myth, while the truth is that there is a deviation of the bodies that move in the sky around the earth and a destruction of what is on the earth, due to an excess of fire, which occurs after long intervals of time".

An excess of fire, therefore, a fire that destroys and at the same time renews [cf. Cyclical time and linear time: Kronos / Shiva, the "Time that devours everything"]. The memory immediately goes to the doctrine of Heraclitus. We cite some fragments, which read with the key we are giving it no longer sound "obscure" as usual, but rather clear enough:

"None of the gods or men did this cosmos, but it always was, is and will be an inextinguishable Fire, which with measure flares up and with measure is extinguished " (Fr. 2);

“All things reciprocate the Fire, and the Fire reciprocates all things (Fr. 3);

"Metamorphosis of Fire: first sea, and half of the sea earth, the other half fiery air" (Fr. 4);

"The land spreads like the sea, and retains the same proportion as it was before" (Fr. 5);

"Seasons, which bring all things" (Fr. 6);

"The Fire will come and take over all things" (Fr. 8). "

It seems to hear a summary in the form of a telegram of the Phaeton catastrophe, especially since, in Fr. 9, He says: "But everything rules the lightning”(Even Indra, Zeus's counterpart in India, often seems to be invested with a“ regulatory ”role by means of his thunderbolt). In this regard, it should be remembered that lightning (René Guénon, Symbols of sacred science, Postal Code. 25) is a symbol of the axis of the world. It therefore seems that Zeus intervened to restore the "measures" to the "earth" burned by the fire.

But what, more precisely, is this fire? It seems something that has to do directly with the sky (and what is the ether if not "fiery air"?). This fire is none other than the equinoctial color of which we have spoken, corresponding to the great circle passing through the celestial poles and the equinoctial points, and which, in the Golden Age, coincided with the Milky Way, holding firmly together the celestial equator and the ecliptic. The Aztecs considered Castor and Pollux (the two main stars of the Gemini constellation) to be the first fire sticks, the ones from which humanity had learned how to produce fire by rubbing. And everything is clear, if we consider that, in the Golden Age, the first term of the equinoctial arc of the Milky Way was placed in Gemini.

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Bibliography:

• Charles – François Dupuis: The origin of all cults (compendium), Martini 1862
• George de Santillana: The origins of scientific thought: from Anaximander to Proclus, 600 BC - 500 ADSansoni 1966
• George de Santillana: Ancient fate and modern fate, Adelphi 1985
• Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend: Hamlet's mill, Adelphi 2003
• Robert Graves: The Greek myths, Longanesi 1963
• Anna Santoni: Ancient stars. Myths of glory and Hybris in the sky of the Greeks and Romans, in (edited by) Alberto Camerotto - Sandro Carniel, Hybris, the limits of man between waters, skies and landsMimesis 2014
• Angelo Tonelli: Eleusis and OrphismFeltrinelli 2015
• Angelo Tonelli: Heraclitus: of the OriginFeltrinelli 2012
• Plato: Timaeus, BU 2014